Gordon Walker, a screenwriter and sometime actor, has hit a bad patch of life. True, his summer appearance in Seattle in the title role of King Lear was modestly successful and personally satisfying. But during the run, his wife of some 20 years left him; his two sons are far away and growing increasingly remote; and he is back in Hollywood pursuing some familiar bad habits: "For the past few weeks, he had been getting by on alcohol and a ten- gram stash of cocaine and he had begun to feel as though he might die quite soon."
Those familiar with any of Author Robert Stone's three earlier novels will immediately recognize Gordon Walker as one of the writer's wounded refugees of the 1960s and a very bad accident waiting to happen. Part of the fascination of Children of Light comes from watching the author nudge his damaged hero through seedy surroundings down the path toward disaster. Walker has what he thinks is a good idea. He will drive down the Baja peninsula to where a screenplay of his is being shot. He wants to see Lu Anne Bourgeois, a former lover and soul mate in the use of controlled substances, who is known professionally as Lee Verger and who stars in the movie.
This project, an adaptation of Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, has begun to attract attention as a modestly budgeted sleeper that just might translate high-minded feminism into box-office success. Walker confides to his agent his plan to check on the proceedings, and he responds with weary irony: "Terrific, Gordo. You're just what they need down there. You can hassle Lee and piss on the press. Get drunk, start fights. Just like old times, right?"
Stone cuts to location, where a few little problems have cropped up even before Walker arrives. Lu Anne has taken herself off the medication that is supposed to control her schizophrenia because, as she explains to her psychiatrist husband, "I'm finding the drug very hard to work behind." + Unwilling to face what may follow, the husband goes ahead with plans to take their two children on a visit to his parents in South Africa. His departure leaves the star alone to face her "Long Friends," hallucinatory specters that have attended her since her Louisiana childhood. She must also deal with Dongan Lowndes, an author who once wrote a critically acclaimed first novel and has since settled for prestigious journalistic assignments. He is on the set of The Awakening at the invitation of a nervous producer, who is eager for a culturally affirmative notice from a New York magazine. Walker, on his way down to this troubled scene, knows in advance what benefits this particular reporter is likely to bestow: "Lowndes can't get it on to write and he hates to see people work. He'll nail them to a tree."